Dear Jason,
As a member of AIS, I thank you for taking the initiative to put pen to paper. That is a great start and I am sure most (if not all) AIS members continue to support the list you have included in your email (rotating conferences, rotating leadership, eLibrary, etc).
But I am obliged to point out none of these were the point of discussion over the past few days. The point was, and remains, whether the so-called Muslim-ban affects enough AIS members to warrant putting a collective statement forward. I am not promoting one side or the other of the argument, but re-iterating a set of principles which have little to do with the argument does not resolve it.
Warm regards,
Hossein
> On 1 Feb 2017, at 12:55 pm, Jason Thatcher <jthatch at clemson.edu> wrote:
>> Dear Friends and Colleagues,
>> Following the recent Executive Order on Immigration in the United States, many members have reached out to me and the Association's leadership team to express concerns about how recent changes in the global political landscape:
>> * affect members' ability to participate in Association for Information Systems (AIS) conferences;
> * undermine members' ability to engage in free and open academic inquiry; and,
> * to ask AIS to speak out against the Executive Order, as it hurts academic freedom.
>> Please accept my thanks for sharing your thoughts and your many expressions of support for sustaining our inclusive, global Information Systems community.
>> That AIS supports free and open exchange of ideas, as well as the free and open movement of our members as they seek to do so, should not be questioned. We are a global Association, composed of more than 4,400 members, who work in 107 countries, and who represent many more nationalities. As an Association, we thrive from the diversity of social, political and cultural beliefs that shape the intellectual culture of our field, and are represented at our conferences.
>> However, because of our diversity, AIS has a long standing best practice that restricts our officers from taking a position on national or regional political issues on behalf of the Association, no matter how personally repugnant leadership may find a policy.
>> While the global political landscape may have changed, the AIS leadership team remains true to the Association's core values of inclusiveness, diversity and open exchange of ideas. We are dedicated to furthering the Associations' primary mission, of growing and sustaining an inclusive, diverse, global information systems community.
>> To that end, we remain committed to:
>> * Requiring the location of our largest conference, the International Conference on Information Systems be held on a different continent each year, thereby creating opportunities for our members to learn more about different cultures and ways of doing things.
> * Rotating our leadership, such that AIS Presidents and most AIS Vice Presidents are drawn from different regions of the globe every year, thereby ensuring diverse views and voices are represented in policy decisions.
> * Providing an accessible dues structure that ensures IS academics from the lowest income countries can afford to participate in the Association.
>> Further, we support:
>> * Conserving scholarly artifacts from all regions of the world in the AIS e-library, as a means to ensure all members' work has a permanent and globally-accessible repository.
> * Hosting conferences and workshops in all regions of the world, irrespective of the dominant faith, creed, or ethnicity, thereby supporting the growth of our scholarly community.
> * Growing diversity in our Association, through Colleges such as the AIS Women's Network and SIGs, such as SIG Inclusion, that afford opportunities for all members of the IS discipline to fully participate in our Association; and,
> * Exploring alternative means of conference participation, particularly for members who are unable to participate due to restrictions on movement.
>> For 22 years this global mission and principles have been the bedrock of AIS. I encourage AIS members to join us in supporting these initiatives - and to suggest more - because by doing so, we enable better scholarship, more effective pedagogy, and strengthen our global Information Systems community.
>> Sincerely,
>>>> [https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/vJSmnxinG1kIZB3Tkvpdf26MZNTwMXFzeD-8gAd5Qh_IM5_6bXHm0t6PkERH8eHwomYmt7KhgsY0MyZRSUfELkBHuxzmo9wRVIrLIzOZAx9u_LlzCZD26LV8NIUJBj7cKhVicHm02zrG-ca8=s0-d-e1-ft#https://files.constantcontact.com/c424cca9001/b8c92862-4165-4485-b82b-f39781cb97cc.jpg]
>>>>>>> Jason Bennett Thatcher
> President
> Association for Information Systems
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